Something about the woman on the television screen made Laura Ray feel uneasy. The lawyer, and widow of a Labor MP, was relaxing at home, mesmerized by the opening minutes Netflix The sensation Baby Reindeer, especially by the character Martha who pursues a struggling comedian.
What was it about Martha that seemed so familiar? Perhaps the raucous laughter that went on for a little too long, or the way she timidly held her handbag to her side when entering the pub. Whatever it was about this curly-haired Scott, he reminded Laura of someone from her past. The realization came like an electric shock, and Laura fell back onto her couch with her mouth open.
Because she knew Martha very well, or rather, the real Martha, who, more than a quarter of a century ago, had ruined Laura’s happy life with a relentless five-year campaign of harassment. At one point it was so bad that Laura was forced to release the staff on herself glasgow Law firm with panic alarm.
Lawyer Laura Ray said after watching Netflix’s Baby Reindeer: ‘I know Martha by her real name, but the series blew my mind.’
In one scene of the play, Martha goes from excitement to screaming rage in an instant. ‘This puts it beyond doubt – I’ve seen him do it,’ says Laura.
Baby Reindeer, which has seen 13 million viewers in just two weeks and is topping Netflix charts in 30 countries, is based on the real-life experience of its creator, Richard Gad, who plays a version of himself, an aspiring comic .
One day, Martha goes to the pub where he works and claims to be a great lawyer, although, inexplicably, is a broke lawyer. Out of pity, he makes a cup of tea for her. So begins the beginning of a terrible obsession.
Soon she is emailing Gad hundreds of times a day, hanging out outside his house and harassing his family and friends.
Gad says that over a period of four and a half years he received 41,071 emails, 744 tweets, a total of 106 pages of letters and 350 hours of voicemail messages.
The series also hints at Martha’s past history of stalking. Gad’s character Donny is seen Googling him and finding a newspaper article – which is fictional for the show – with the headline: ‘Sick stalker targets barrister’s deaf child.’
Gad has emphasized that the character of Martha was so well-hidden in his script that the real-life person on whom she was based ‘wouldn’t even recognize herself’. But for Laura – the ‘barrister’ referred to in those fake headlines – the shocking identity of the woman who had terrorized her family, including her severely disabled son Frankie, was revealed almost immediately.
Nor did it take long for Internet sleuths to uncover the real Martha and make her the target of online abuse.
Speaking to The Mail on Sunday yesterday, the woman – whose identity we have decided not to reveal – claimed the Netflix show was like ‘bullying an older woman on television for fame and money’ and she was criticized by Gad’s supporters. Had received ‘death threats’ from. , The comedian ‘was now using a baby reindeer to stalk me,’ he said.
But while ‘Martha’ may be keen to portray herself as a victim, it’s a bit ironic for Laura.
Whatever the case, Laura’s nightmare eclipsed Gad’s. At one time ‘Martha’ threatened to kill her husband, Jimmy Ray, then MP for Glasgow Baillieston.
But the final blow came in 2002 when the woman falsely accused the couple of attacking nearly four-year-old Frankie, who was born with a rare chromosomal disorder. ‘I know Martha by her real name, but watching the series left me in shock,’ said Laura, speaking exclusively to the Mail on Sunday about her ordeal for the first time.
‘It brought a lot of things back to me that I had forgotten. He did the same to me, made my life a nightmare. He [Gadd] He’s got it spot-on. His reaction was exactly like mine. I felt sorry for him. It seems that everyone she has met who has harassed her has felt the same way.’
The real ‘Martha’, now 58, came from a middle-class family who lived in a village near Stirling.
She was a law graduate and came into Laura’s class for the first time in October 1997, when Laura was persuaded to give her a two-week trial at her company. ‘She told me a real tough story about how she had no family support and how she got her law degree and was looking for an apprenticeship, but no one gave her one,’ says Laura.
‘I had my reservations. She was very clearly telling me all these personal things. Before we met, she sent me a postcard congratulating me on my engagement to Jimmy. But basically, I felt sorry for him.
‘Once she started with us she was rude to everyone. Once he threw a book across the room and hit a staff member on the head. One day, she took over a phone line and we discovered she was recommending rival solicitors.
Jessica Gunning who plays Martha in Baby Reindeer pursues a struggling comedian
‘She also yelled at Karen, one of my secretaries, and demanded that she drop whatever she was doing for me and do something for her immediately instead.
‘Then she started threatening and yelling at people, like in Baby Reindeer when she goes from being pleasant enough to yelling, ‘Don’t talk to me like that!’
‘He did exactly the same [in my office] And I told him, ‘We’re a business, I can’t behave like this.’ After a week I fired him. She was angry and threatened that she would do this, that and that to me.
‘Then she ran out of my room screaming that she wasn’t going and that she was calling the Law Society. She was saying that everyone in the legal world disliked me and that my staff was useless. Then she started shouting, ‘Jimmy Ray you will regret this day.’
‘Some of the girls in the office were shaking and upset and thought she was going to attack me or another employee. She was eventually thrown out, still calling me nasty names, and was later seen driving around the office in her car.’
She soon began making threatening phone calls to Laura saying ‘I’ll get you’ and humiliating her in front of other lawyers, her family, friends and her husband’s political allies, including Donald Dewar, the former First Minister of Scotland. It started.
In September 2001, the woman also left a message on her MP’s answering machine, threatening to kill Jimmy. Feeling ‘really sorry’ for him, Laura tried to ignore it. She says, ‘There was no law then against stalking or harassing.
‘There was no clear right of recourse for me. The only thing I could do was sue for defamation, but there was no point, he had no money and the only other option was to use the civil process which wasn’t really designed for that kind of thing. ‘
Yet his store of compassion would soon run dry.
Things got worse when Laura started a course at Strathclyde University the following month to gain some additional qualifications. On the first day, she ran into her stalker – staring at her across the room, his gaze like a spear. ‘Every lecture I used to go to, she kept coming back again and again. She had come there suddenly.
‘Many times she came and stood near me while students were waiting for the doors of the lecture hall to open. I miss her being right next to me – almost breathing on top of me. It was very disturbing and I was scared. I had to take some other students with me to my car.
‘I went to a professor and explained everything and he looked at the list and said he wasn’t actually registered as a student. But the university ignored me and did nothing.
The university later apologized and acknowledged that the woman was in fact a student, but that she had been permanently expelled due to her behavior towards other students and staff.
But in April 2002 his behavior towards Laura finally crossed a line. She arrived home with Frankie, aged about four, and found two social workers at her door.
,[The woman] “We claimed we had killed our son and I was forced to explain the whole background,” says Laura. “Social workers thankfully believed me but it was horrible, and I was absolutely was angry.
‘This is a child who can’t walk or talk, can’t do anything for himself. To think that someone might suggest that we do [harm him] Is evil and cruel.
‘It was all well and good to assume someone was mentally ill and ignore the abuse. But the last thing was Frankie, and I didn’t have that.’
Laura applied to the courts for a restraining order, which was granted the next day.
Gad has emphasized that the character of Martha was so well-hidden in his script that the real-life person on whom she was based ‘wouldn’t even recognize herself.’
For Laura and her family, this brought them long-awaited peace. But over the years she sometimes found herself wondering what happened to her pursuer. Did he target others? Did he get the help he needed?
And then came the baby reindeer. ‘I’m saddened that she managed to hold on for so long when she was clearly unwell,’ says Laura.
He is also disappointed that the woman has now been identified on social media as a result of the Netflix show – despite Gad’s insistence that he obscure her identity.
‘They had an Edinburgh Fringe show which featured this story and now they’ve got this hit series on Netflix and all the best to them, but it must have occurred to them that people were bound to guess who Martha was. Is – and has he done this to anyone else,’ says Laura.
‘They could have changed things without diluting the content, but they made it so realistic.
‘They portrayed her perfectly, it’s clearly the same woman who stalked me. This is very supernatural.’
Additional reporting: Daisy Graham-Brown